Tarot and astrology look like two separate practices: one a deck of 78 cards, the other a map of the sky at your birth. Yet for more than a century, tarot and astrology have been read as a single symbolic language. When you understand how the cards and the signs correspond, a tarot reading can speak to your chart, and your chart can deepen a tarot reading. This lesson, part of our ongoing tarot course here in The Library, walks you through that bridge step by step, from the simplest shared element to a full chart you can lay out in cards.
A note on honesty before we begin, because it matters. The correspondences you are about to learn are a traditional system, mostly codified by the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in the late nineteenth century. They are a deliberate set of associations, not a proven fact of nature. There is no law that makes The Empress "belong" to Venus. What there is, is a beautifully consistent symbolic framework that generations of readers have found meaningful and useful. Treat it as a language to think in, not a truth to obey.
Why Tarot and Astrology Belong Together
Both systems are built on the same raw material: archetypes. Astrology sorts experience into planets, signs and houses. Tarot sorts it into suits, numbers and figures. They were never originally one tradition, but esoteric thinkers spent the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries weaving them, along with numerology and the Kabbalah, into a shared web of meaning. The Golden Dawn drew that web tightest, assigning every one of the 78 cards a planetary, zodiacal or elemental partner.
A.E. Waite, who designed the most popular tarot deck in the world with the artist Pamela Colman Smith, was himself a Golden Dawn member, and his 1910 handbook traces how the suits descend from older symbols. He notes that the four suits are the antecedents of Diamonds in modern cards: Cups, corresponding to Hearts; Swords, which answer to Clubs ... and, finally, Pentacles
, the prototypes of Spades. The same instinct that mapped tarot onto playing cards mapped it onto the heavens.
You do not need to memorise all 78 to feel the benefit. Start with the elements, add the Major Arcana, and you already have a working bridge between the two practices. If you are new to reading the sky, our free birth chart calculator will give you the planets and signs you need to follow along.
The Four Elements: The Simplest Bridge
The cleanest place to start is the four classical elements, because both systems already use them. In astrology, the twelve signs divide into four elemental groups, called triplicities: fire, earth, air and water. In tarot, the four suits of the Minor Arcana carry exactly the same four elements.
The Golden Dawn settled the suit attributions as follows, and they are the most widely used today:
- Wands = Fire. Drive, passion, creativity, action. The fire signs are Aries, Leo and Sagittarius.
- Cups = Water. Emotion, intuition, love, the inner life. The water signs are Cancer, Scorpio and Pisces.
- Swords = Air. Thought, communication, conflict, clarity. The air signs are Gemini, Libra and Aquarius.
- Pentacles = Earth. Money, body, work, the material world. The earth signs are Taurus, Virgo and Capricorn.
This single layer is enough to read across the two systems. If your chart is heavy in water, the suit of Cups will often feel like home. If you draw a hand full of Swords during an air-sign season, the cards and the sky are pointing at the same theme: it is a time for thinking, talking and deciding.
One honest caveat. A few older traditions, including some French sources, swap Wands and Swords, placing Wands with Air and Swords with Fire. The Golden Dawn settled on Wands as Fire and Swords as Air, and because the Rider-Waite-Smith deck grew out of that order, it is the version most readers use now. If you ever pick up a book that disagrees, that is the reason. Choose one system and stay consistent within a reading.
The Major Arcana and the Golden Dawn Correspondences
The 22 cards of the Major Arcana carry the deepest meanings in the deck, so it is fitting that the Golden Dawn matched them to the planets and signs. Some Majors take one of the seven classical planets, twelve take a zodiac sign, and a handful are linked to the three elements or, in later refinements, to the outer planets discovered after the original system was drawn up.
How to Read the Reference Table
Two things to keep in mind. First, the twelve sign-cards march in zodiac order, from The Emperor as Aries to The Moon as Pisces, which makes them easy to remember. Second, there are two layers in circulation. The original Golden Dawn system used only the seven classical planets. Later readers, influenced by Aleister Crowley, added the modern outer planets to three cards. Both are shown below so you can choose your own. If you want the meanings behind each card, our guide to the Major Arcana covers all 22 in depth.
| Major Arcana Card | Sign or Planet |
|---|---|
| The Fool | Air (later: Uranus) |
| The Magician | Mercury |
| The High Priestess | Moon |
| The Empress | Venus |
| The Emperor | Aries |
| The Hierophant | Taurus |
| The Lovers | Gemini |
| The Chariot | Cancer |
| Strength | Leo |
| The Hermit | Virgo |
| Wheel of Fortune | Jupiter |
| Justice | Libra |
| The Hanged Man | Water (later: Neptune) |
| Death | Scorpio |
| Temperance | Sagittarius |
| The Devil | Capricorn |
| The Tower | Mars |
| The Star | Aquarius |
| The Moon | Pisces |
| The Sun | Sun |
| Judgement | Fire (later: Pluto) |
| The World | Saturn |
Notice how the symbolism rhymes. The Empress, a card of love, beauty and abundance, is held by Venus, the planet of love, beauty and abundance. The Tower, a card of sudden upheaval, answers to Mars, the planet of force and rupture. The Moon card belongs to Pisces, the dreamy, boundary-dissolving water sign, while the Moon as a planet belongs to The High Priestess. These are not random pairings: they were chosen so each card and its partner say the same thing in two dialects.
The Court Cards and the Signs
The sixteen court cards, four ranks across four suits, are often the trickiest part of the deck. Astrology gives you a shortcut. Each court card belongs to its suit's element first: every Wands court figure is fiery, every Cups figure watery, every Swords figure airy, every Pentacles figure earthy. That alone tells you a great deal about the personality the card describes.
The Golden Dawn went further and tied the ranks to the three modalities within each element, so a court card can point to a specific sign. The systems differ a little on which rank gets which modality, and the naming of ranks shifts between the Rider-Waite-Smith and Thoth decks, so it is worth holding this layer loosely. The reliable, beginner-friendly move is to read court cards through their element: a Knight of Cups carries watery, emotional energy that resonates with the water signs, whoever in your life that may be. As you advance in the course you can add the modality layer on top.
Which Tarot Card Is My Zodiac Sign?
This is the question most people arrive with, and the table above answers the first half of it. To find the Major Arcana card tied to your sun sign, simply look up your sign:
- Aries: The Emperor
- Taurus: The Hierophant
- Gemini: The Lovers
- Cancer: The Chariot
- Leo: Strength
- Virgo: The Hermit
- Libra: Justice
- Scorpio: Death
- Sagittarius: Temperance
- Capricorn: The Devil
- Aquarius: The Star
- Pisces: The Moon
If you are an Aries, for example, The Emperor is your card: structure, leadership and the will to begin. You can read more about that energy in our Aries star sign guide. A Pisces is held by The Moon, a card of intuition, dreams and the unseen, explored in our Moon tarot card guide.
Finding Your Cards From the Whole Birth Chart
Your sun sign is only one card. A birth chart is far richer, and so is the set of cards it points to. Once you have run your birth chart, you can collect a small personal spread:
- Your sun sign card, from the list above, for your core identity.
- Your moon sign card, for your emotional inner world.
- Your rising sign card, for the face you show the world.
- The card for your chart ruler, the planet that rules your rising sign, for an overarching theme.
Lay those three or four Majors side by side and you have a tarot portrait of your chart. A Cancer sun, Aquarius moon and Virgo rising would gather The Chariot, The Star and The Hermit: a person who protects and pushes forward, dreams of something better, and quietly perfects the details. The cards will not say anything your chart does not, but seeing them as images often makes the chart click in a way that pure astrology does not.
Practical Ways to Weave the Two Together
Once the correspondences are familiar, they become reading tools. Here are four ways to bring tarot and astrology into the same practice.
Pull a Card for a Planet
Choose a planet you want insight on, say Venus for your love life, and draw a single card while holding that planet in mind. Then compare what you drew with Venus's own card, The Empress. If they echo each other, the message is reinforced. If they clash, that tension is worth sitting with.
Read the Card for the Current Transit
Astrology talks constantly about transits, the live movements of the planets. When a transit is shaping your week, pull the Major Arcana card that corresponds to that planet or sign and let it colour your reading. A Mars-heavy period pairs naturally with The Tower's themes of pressure and release; a Jupiter transit invites the expansive luck of the Wheel of Fortune.
Design a Spread Around Your Elements
Lay out four positions, one for each element, and read a card in each. Pay special attention to the element your chart is missing or low in, because that is often where the cards have the most to teach you.
Track the Season With the Sign Cards
As the sun moves through each sign, sit with that sign's Major Arcana card for the month. Through Scorpio season you would work with Death, the card of endings and transformation, matching the introspective mood of that part of the year.
Where to Go Next
You now have the bridge: the four elements linking the suits to the triplicities, the Golden Dawn table linking the Major Arcana to the planets and signs, and a handful of practical ways to read the two together. The next step is practice. Pull your sun, moon and rising cards this week and notice what they reveal. When you are ready to go deeper into how all of this fits together, our structured tarot course takes you through the correspondences card by card, with the symbolism, the astrology and the reading craft in one place.
Keep Exploring
Frequently asked questions
Both are symbolic systems built on the same archetypes, and esoteric thinkers, chiefly the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, deliberately matched them together in the nineteenth century. The four tarot suits share the four elements with the zodiac, and each Major Arcana card was assigned a planet, sign or element. It is a traditional correspondence system rather than a proven fact, but it lets a reading in one system speak to the other.
Each zodiac sign has a Major Arcana card in the Golden Dawn system: Aries is The Emperor, Taurus The Hierophant, Gemini The Lovers, Cancer The Chariot, Leo Strength, Virgo The Hermit, Libra Justice, Scorpio Death, Sagittarius Temperance, Capricorn The Devil, Aquarius The Star and Pisces The Moon. Look up your sun sign to find your card, then add your moon and rising signs for a fuller picture.
In the standard Golden Dawn system, Wands are Fire, Cups are Water, Swords are Air and Pentacles are Earth. These match the zodiac's four elemental groups, so the suit of Cups echoes the water signs Cancer, Scorpio and Pisces, and so on. Some older traditions swap Wands and Swords, but the Wands-Fire and Swords-Air pairing is the most widely used today.
No. The correspondences are a traditional symbolic framework, mostly codified by the Golden Dawn, not a law of nature. They are valuable as a consistent language for reflection and self-understanding, which is how most readers use them. We always recommend treating tarot as a tool for insight rather than a way to predict a fixed future.
Run your birth chart, then collect the Major Arcana cards for your sun, moon and rising signs, plus the card for your chart ruler. Laid side by side they form a tarot portrait of your chart. You can also pull a card for a specific planet or current transit and compare it with that planet's own card to deepen the reading.
In the Golden Dawn system the planet Moon is assigned to The High Priestess, while The Moon card is assigned to the water sign Pisces. It can be confusing at first, but the logic holds: The High Priestess embodies the planet's intuitive, reflective quality, and The Moon card embodies the dreamy, boundary-dissolving nature of Pisces.
